Open Reflectionshttps://mathplourde.wordpress.com
My personal open space to reflect on the role of open in higher education.Wed, 03 Jun 2015 12:51:06 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/5d5aee5894330f52204c7b848f025b1b?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngOpen Reflectionshttps://mathplourde.wordpress.com
Optimize Your Professional Online Presence #UDSFI15 @10:30amhttps://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/udsfi15/
https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/udsfi15/#commentsWed, 03 Jun 2015 12:50:57 +0000http://mathplourde.wordpress.com/?p=609Continue reading →]]>On June 3, 2015, the always awesome Holly Norton (@NortonHolly) and yours truly (@mathplourde) will be moderating a discussion centered around academic digital presence during the University of Delaware’s Summer Faculty Institute. This post is the home base for the links and artifacts from the session.

You can catch the live stream from Gore Hall room 104 starting at 10:30 a.m. EDT form this link, and interact with the live audience using the #UDSFI15 hashtag on Twitter.

Links to platforms and examples are listed in the following Google Doc.

On June 30, I will moderate a session as a part of the Young African Leaders Initiative at the University of Delaware. Participants are a part of a “highly accomplished and talented group of young Africans, ages 25-35, who are in leadership positions with civic/advocacy organizations in their home countries”, as described by program coordinator Gretchen Bauer, chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at UD. My session is titled Digital Citizenship, Activism, and Social Media, and will focus on literacies for activism and civic engagement in a mobile/digital age.

I will use this blog post as a home base to share slides, links, backchannel information, and archive artifacts.

Kristen Hefner (doctoral student and instructor, Sociology and Criminal Justice) exposed her “Ouch/Oops” rule, which I found fascinating. She teaches a topic that touches on current debates in society, and wanted to make sure people could express themselves, but within boundaries. So, when a student expresses something that another student finds offensive, the other student can yell “Ouch”, and the class pauses to allow for the offensive comment to be examined, tweaked, explained, retracted, etc.

I think this kind of process empowers the students to control what happens in the classroom, and increases engagement in debate-based classes. The same kind of process could be applied to knowledge mastery classes, allowing for students to interrupt a lecture to ask for clarifications on new terms or concepts.

The next, less disruptive iteration of this idea would be to allow for a “parking lot” of requests for explanations. That parking lot could be physical (write your question on an index card and pass it to the TA; write the question on a blackboard) or digital (tweet your question, use the discussion board, use a collaborative Google Doc for the class, etc.). For these processes to work, it is important for the instructor to monitor and address the parking lot into the class routine, either as face-to-face or as online loops.

Anyway, just a little teaching nugget I wanted to share!

Filed under: Faculty Practice, Uncategorized Tagged: classroom, engagement, learning space, teaching]]>https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/pause-mechanisms/feed/0mathplourdeCrying child by Binu Kumar on Flickr (CC-By)Why Open Matters recording #openeducationwkhttps://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/why-open-matters/
https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/why-open-matters/#commentsThu, 13 Mar 2014 18:09:45 +0000http://mathplourde.wordpress.com/?p=568Continue reading →]]>This morning, I ran a local presentation/Google Hangouts on Air for Open Education Week at the University of Delaware. I tried my best to present what open education is, and how it should play a role in our institution. Below are the slides and the recording.

Filed under: OER, Training Sessions Tagged: open education, Open Education Week, openeducationwk, University of Delaware]]>https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/why-open-matters/feed/0mathplourdeMy #edcmooc digital artifacthttps://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/edcmooc-artifact/
https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/edcmooc-artifact/#commentsMon, 02 Dec 2013 03:55:31 +0000http://mathplourde.wordpress.com/?p=472Continue reading →]]>First of all, let me start by putting it out there that both “artifact” and “artefact” are acceptable forms of the word. As someone who lives in the USA, it seems like “artifact” is the most common form we use, and will stick to it for this whole post.

My main goal for this #edcmooc artifact is to try to articulate some of my takeaways from this course, and links to other sources I have found and read over time, from a content and an pedagogical perspective.

Utopias and dystopias

Up until this course, I had always viewed technology in a positive light (as a future utopia). As an educational technologist, it is my job to find valuable ways to use technology to automate routine tasks (improve scale and efficiency) or innovate (change the process to improve learning outcomes). Of course, I always find roadblocks and pitfalls, but I usually find workarounds to avoid them and make the cost/benefit of using technology tilt to the positive side.

In Race Against the Machine, Brynjolfsson & McAfee (2011) warn us against technological unemployment, where corporation learn to operate without humans (think Bank Teller versus ATM, or TurboTax versus Tax Preparation Clerk). The following passage exposes a different paradigm, which applies more closely to the scenario I envision for advances in technology:

As steam power advanced and spread throughout industry, more human workers were needed, not fewer. They were needed not for their raw physical strength (as was the case with John Henry) but instead for other human skills: physical ones like locomotion, dexterity, coordination, and perception, and mental ones like communication, pattern matching, and creativity. (Kindle Locations 787-790).

[…] economic progress comes from constant innovation in which people race with machines. Human and machine collaborate together in a race to produce more, to capture markets, and to beat other teams of humans and machines. This lesson remains valid and instructive today as machines are winning head-to-head mental contests, not just physical ones.

Like Clive Thompson in The Cyborg Advantage, I believe humans will find ways to race with the machine to achieve higher performance, combining the clockwork, cold, analytic machine with the human sense making, pattern seeking abilities. But it will come at a cost, for people who are blindsided or feel entitled to their current way of living.

The automation of education

Although it has not been addressed directly in the course, the automation of education has become a larger concern for me. I understand the political pressure of making education “better,” but I believe that automating education through technology has a fundamental flaw when it is only concerned with getting more students through the system using standardized (another word could be “sanitized”) content and testing. Sure, some modules can be automated. Some learning modules are factual by nature, and have a clear right or wrong answer. But should we trust algorithms to control our learning flow, especially for higher-level skills at the top of Bloom’s taxonomy?

Teachers will have access to an ever-growing body of knowledge, and will be asked to curate that knowledge and present it to students in a palatable fashion. I think teacher freedom and guidance is, more than ever, needed in our age of transparency. As everything we do gets recorded, how can we make sure the next generation of students will not step into booby-traps that could affect their livelihood 10, 20, or 50 years from now, as employers and colleagues stumble upon digital faux-pas? For more information technology literacy, I invite you to follow the work of Howard Rheingold.

Defining humanity

Being human has to be more than the simple fact that we are evolved biological beings. In They’re Made Out of Meat, this ridiculous fact is exposed as being something repellent, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

What gives human beings the advantage over other biological beings, such as other mammals, is our superior use of our brain functions, which gives us the chance to enhance ourselves with the use of technology. I’ve illustrated this advantage below (UPDATE: Bear + Tech vs. Man + Tech = Advantage Bear, LOL, Matthew Jones).

In my opinion, detaching human beings from its creations is a mistake. On the other hand, we define cruel behaviors as being inhuman, so, from a moral standpoint, humanity is defined as the choices and actions we make. Jean-Paul Sartre defined this as:

“To choose this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.” (unverified quote, taken from Wikiquotes)

Layers of infrastructure

As society becomes more complex and more productive, we all become interdependent. Accessing the Internet from your computer requires a web browser, an operating system, a computer, a router, and internet connection, an internet provider, link between internet providers, servers, data warehouses, air conditioning, electricity, power plants (natural gas, sunlight, wind, coal, hydro plant, etc.), corporation, governments, and workers operating all of this infrastructure.

As we live more of our lives in the cloud, we make ourselves vulnerable to any layer going bad, as illustrated in the following image of the game Jenga.

Just like when we play Jenga, as the layers of technology pile higher on top of one another, one flaw in a bottom layer can make the whole system crumble. (Credit: Claus Rebler)

Consciousness and control

If we can become transhuman, and transfer our consciousness through technology, aren’t we also exposing ourselves to becoming hackable? So far, we have not been able to truly take control of one another, for better (such as a surgeon taking over the movement of an apprentice) or worse (the Manchurian candidate).

I hope these ramblings make sense to you, and welcome any feedback or comments!

Filed under: EDUC866 Tagged: coursera, digital artifact, edcmooc, human, MOOC]]>https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/edcmooc-artifact/feed/3mathplourdeCopyright for Educators: The opposite of massivehttps://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/p2pu/
https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/p2pu/#commentsTue, 08 Oct 2013 02:14:12 +0000http://mathplourde.wordpress.com/?p=464Continue reading →]]>As a part of my Ed. D., I have enrolled in an independent study this fall. With Tina Trimble as a buddy, we are exploring independent learning through MOOCs (and other non-denominational open learning platforms). Here is our proposal for the fall.

Knowing that I was going to do this, I actually cheated and completed an open course early in the semester. I wanted to included some of the key points about my experience in a blog post, because I believe the future of scholarship is open.

This six-week course was offered in August and September of 2013, and was moderated by Laura Quilter, a Librarian and Lawyer who works for the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

My motivation in taking this class

My interests in this specific course was twofold: I wanted to learn more about copyright and fair use, and I wanted to experience a free and open online course from P2PU, which seemed more palatable to me than massive initiatives. To my knowledge, the enrollment for this course was very limited (capped around 40 or so), so the experience was very intimate.

Course design

The course design was pretty simple (it had to be for a six-week course). The first thing we needed to do to enroll in the class was to find a teammate, a buddy who would share the coursework and would act as a partner to discuss course materials.

Once who participants had paired up, they need to announce their alliance on the course’s Google Group to be officially enrolled. I tagged up with someone from Illinois, and we were all set.

There were six content modules for the class, all logically scaffolded to start from the basics of copyright to more fuzzy interpretations of fair use. After modules two, four, and six, participants had to complete an assignment, which was designed as a case study centered around the practices of an educator asking for our help.

Successfully completing an assignment allowed participants to submit their project to get a digital badge from P2PU. I’ll get to that a bit later.

In addition to the content and assignments, the instructor held weekly Google Chats (which turned into Google Hangouts) to answer question more directly.

In general, I thought the experience was very worthwhile. The next sections will present some of the points that really made an impression on me.

The buddy system

Dropout rates in MOOCs are usually pretty drastic. In a 2012 TED talk, Peter Norvig, co-founder of Udacity, states that 20,000 out of the 160,000 participants who enrolled in his 2011 Artificial Intelligence class complete the course. That’s a 12.5% completion rate, which might –or might not be– a big deal.

Establishing a buddy system from the get-go was probably one of the most interesting process for this class. It basically forced participants in committing for the length of the course, and since the enrollment was capped, put the pressure on people who got in to commit or to leave their seat to someone on the waiting list.

The pacing involved in having to produce teamwork has always been a strong motivator for me, and starting class that way gave me a boost in my level of commitment.

Unfortunately, my buddy had to drop the class and I had to find a new one after the first assignment, but I was lucky enough to find another person who lost their partner early one, and it was smooth sailing from there on.

The open hours

Most weeks, only two people who show up for the open hour on Google Hangouts. I ended up having wonderful conversation with our instructor, conversations I would have had to pay for outside of the context of this (free) course. The small number of participants, although not very favorable to generating forums discussions, was very favorable to establishing rapport among buddies and with the instructor.

As a side story, the instructor of the course was not very familiar with Google Hangouts, so I took charge of drafting some guidelines for participating in the open hour. This is very much in line with P2PU’s perspective on learning. Everyone can learn from everyone.

The transparency

Course contents and student projects were made available openly on the web. That was the only way participants could submit their assignments. Having to submit your project openly means that everyone can see your work, good or bad. As a learner, you basically benchmark your work with the Internet, and hope for feedback, good or bad. Many people do not feel comfortable with showing their vulnerable side, but I think in this case, it was for the best.

The badges

First of all, the idea is not new. Many social media platforms, such as Foursquare, award badges for checking in to local businesses. They turn geo-location into a game (reference: gamification).

And just like Girl Scouts, lifelong learners complete challenges and are recognized for completing those challenges. Digital badges are a way to issue, earn, and display completed tasks and acquired skills.

Completing the assignments allowed me to submit my projects for badges, which were awarded by the instructor. The work I produced, the instructions of what was required to get the badge, the issuer of the badge, the person who assessed the work and awarded the badge, everything in the process is openly available.

You can now look at my backpack and see my work online, reflecting real project and real feedback from real people, and you can dig as much as you want if you doubt of the quality of the work, because it’s all there in front of you, a couple of clicks away.

I think that the idea of using digital badges will have a great impact on education in the years to come. It is such a nice way to showcase your work as a learner. And since the Open Badges backpack is an open source project, it can be connected to any platform on the web.

Conclusion

This course has been a joy to work through. My partners, the instructor, the content, the assignments, the setting… Everything felt very intimate and very open. I doubt courses supported by the big guys (Coursera, EdX, Udacity) will ever have this feeling. But keeping low overhead costs and small enrollments has its benefits, and this course has proved it to me.

A big thank you to my partners, Caitlin and Elizabeth, and to Laura Quilter as an instructor. This was a very interesting and enlightening course, and I could not have done it alone.

Filed under: EDUC866 Tagged: copyright, Fair use, MOOC, P2PU]]>https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/p2pu/feed/3mathplourdeOpen badge backpack#SMstrategy13 Personal branding recaphttps://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/smstrategy13-personal-branding-recap/
https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/smstrategy13-personal-branding-recap/#commentsMon, 30 Sep 2013 14:26:08 +0000http://mathplourde.wordpress.com/?p=461Continue reading →]]>I’ve read and commented on about 20 blog posts created by participants in the Social Media Marketing Strategy certificate, for which I’m a co-instructor, and wanted to share some general feedback with the class (and the wonderful people of the Republic of the Interwebs). In general, everyone did a good job at getting started with WordPress and writing thoughtful first posts that expressed who they are, and what their goals are.

The original prompt was the following:

What is my professional online brand, and how is it similar or different from my corporation/employer’s brand?

Audience concerns

In many cases, I prompted the participants to stop thinking about the client, which might be counter-intuitive for some customer-oriented individuals. Many participants expressed their eagerness to find, create, and share content with their current or potential clients, and exposed their current practices in aggregating and curating quality content. But when it comes to personal branding and professional development, you also need to think of yourself as the client. You are the person to cater to. You need to find the sources of information and people who can push your work practices to the next level. I’ll refer you back to this slide from my last presentation to let you ponder on your learning and sharing process.

Are you mixing audiences?

If you are sharing the same content to clients and peers, chances are that your are not filtering your online presence appropriately. Same thing when it comes to reading your online streams. Make sure to come up with a clear strategy to separate your “football Sunday” and “knitting club” persona from your “social media professional”. It doesn’t mean that one cannot appear in the other, it just means that you should at least apply the 80/20 rule (80% of your posts in a certain stream should relate to the main goal of that stream, or else people you are targeting will never pay attention or stop paying attention).

Beyond applying smart filters, this also comes down to your social media policy. You can use mine as an example, but make sure to develop one to call your own, and to share it with your “followers” and “circlers”.

Surround yourself with keywords

In certain cases, I noticed a lack of keywords. People used adjectives (dependable, on-time, strategic, etc.) but might not have used industry or discipline keywords (tourism, banking, retail, teenagers, etc.). Remember that keywords will help people 1) find you through various searches and 2) decide to follow you when they look at your profiles. Never leave a profile image blank, and always fill out the profile information on any network diligently and strategically.

—

Hope this is useful! Keep improving “the brand called you” and have a nice semester!

One sunny day 18 Mays ago, I sat in a black cap and gown, listening to the writer John Jakes describe how the diploma I’d soon receive represented just the start of a lifetime of learning.

“My congratulations on completing your incomplete education,” he told the DePauw University Class of 1995. “Now go out and finish it.”

Graduation is on the agenda for many people at this time of the year, and that piece of advice is extremely relevant to people entering the workforce. Learning cannot stop when you get out of school. It’s actually where most of it starts.

As someone who’s been working full time for the last 12 years, I’d like to share some thoughts regarding my views of lifelong professional development. I think the process is a cycle that goes somewhat like this: Update, expand, challenge, and validate.

1. Update

If you are to become an expert, or at least someone who will get consulted in an area of expertise, you need to keep up with the news in your industry. Most people do this by watching the news, reading specialized magazines and journals, subscribing to mailing lists and notifications, going to conferences or trade shows, etc.

But nowadays, you really need to connect to people you trust on social media to be in the know as soon as something happens. So make sure to follow and interact with people in your industry, to create a personalized flow of information coming your way (a dashboard populated by people in your personal learning network).

2. Expand

Don’t get cornered in your little slice of the pie. You need a larger view of your job, your industry, the economy, and the world to be able to put your expertise in perspective. Having a broader view allows you to seize opportunities and detect when you’re heading in a dead-end.

To expand your knowledge, you need to follow people who have made their niche a topic you are peripherally interested in. By delegating the task of keeping track of peripheral topics to people you trust, you liberate yourself from having to do it yourself.

3. Challenge

Don’t be afraid to follow people who disagree with your point of view. You need to keep an open mind and assess your beliefs against the ones you’re exposed to. Your personal learning network should not be an echo chamber. If that’s the case, you’re doing it wrong.

4. Validate

When you find something out (or when you’re not sure if you’ve nailed it), expose your line of thoughts by blogging, posting updates, creating diagrams or videos, whatever you need to get the word out, and invite others to criticize. This way, you will get a sense of the validity of your ideas; you will know if the wisdom of the crowd supports your case.

Leverage your connections by engaging them in a discussion (not simply by hoping to get people to read your blog). Target people in your social media shares (by using “@”s and “plusses”) by picking out key quotes and writing down questions to be addressed. If you don’t know what this looks like, check out Laura Gibbs Google+ account!

… and do it over and over again

Never let an old notion stick for too long. Always repeat the process. The world changes at an ever-accelerating pace, so your mind needs to ride along.

In a change management class I took many years ago with Professor Carole Lalonde, the concept of crystallization was introduced to me. I couldn’t find the original article from Kurt Lewin (1952), but here is a quote from Bareil & Savoie(1999) summarizing his time-based change management theory.

Filed under: PLN Tagged: career, learning, professional development]]>https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/pd-process/feed/1mathplourdePhoto credit: Howard on FlickrOne degree of separationhttps://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/one-degree-of-separation/
https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/one-degree-of-separation/#commentsTue, 21 May 2013 12:34:30 +0000http://mathplourde.wordpress.com/?p=442Continue reading →]]>Yesterday, I was listening to Phil Hill‘s interview about MOOCs and trends in higher education (in preparation for the University of Delaware’s Summer Faculty Institute, where he will be one of the featured speakers), and something occurred to me. There was a discussion regarding the use of MOOCs to bring renowned experts to your regular classroom, by using some of their online videos.

The idea is basically to deconstruct MOOCs into little pieces, and using some of those nuggets as a part of your instructional sequence with your students in your (physical or online) classroom. Although I agree that the fact that all that video is out there and prime to be used, most xMOOCs (Coursera, edX, Udacity) are not designed to be deconstructed that way. Some might even prevent, through intellectual property or technical restrictions, to use the materials outside of their intended context (as a part of the course package). The first “O” in MOOC stands for “Open”, which refers to open enrollment, not openness in reusing, revising, remixing, orredistributing (David Wiley’s 4Rs). This reminds me a little of the problem many of us have with only using certain chapters in textbooks instead of making students buy the whole book for three chapters.

What faculty really need…

As faculty start talking about deconstructing MOOCs, what they are really expressing is a need for open educational resources (OER). Well, guess what? OER have been around and largely ignored for the longest time, so maybe the time is right to reintroduce the concept. Open educational resources are learning objects of different shapes and sizes for which intellectual property rights have been licensed to allow the 4Rs by default. As an educator, as long as you comply with the rights’ holder intentions, you can do whatever you want with the OER you find online.

Experts are everywhere!

As for bringing in experts to your classroom, yes, Youtube or some MOOC can provide video content that’s engaging. But what about connecting to the experts and conducting your own interview with them? With social media, especially non-reciprocal social media like Twitter or Google+, you can connect with experts everywhere. You can also use more official channels like LinkedIn, where you can ask a colleague you know to introduce you to someone they are connected to.

The idea is that if you can establish a direct contact with someone and ask them to participate in a webcam interview, most of them who are already active on social media will say yes. That’s what happened to me during my #udsnf12 class when I got Jane Bozarth to chat with me for 30 minutes on Google Hangouts on Air. The result becomes an engaging and customized Youtube video you can include in your class materials.

Filed under: OER, PLN Tagged: GoogleHangouts, MOOC, PhilHill, sfi2013]]>https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/one-degree-of-separation/feed/0mathplourdeCredit: Andrew Becraft on FlickrPresentation about #ds106 in EDUC650https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/ds106-preso/
https://mathplourde.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/ds106-preso/#commentsWed, 08 May 2013 18:18:25 +0000http://mathplourde.wordpress.com/?p=437Continue reading →]]>On May 7, 2013, around 4:45 or 5:00 p.m., I’ll be presenting about Digital Storytelling 106, more commonly referred to as DS106. This is a part of my Ed.D. coursework, for a class titled “Technology and Cognition” with Dr. Fred Hofstetter.

I am overall so impressed with what DS106 has become in so little time. It’s an amazing, eclectic, informal learning space and community that never back down in front of a challenge. It’s also a virtuous circle of grassroot positive energy that keeps you going as a learner. Once you start DS106 and engage with the community, you become a part of that community. It’s what the Internet is all about.